Dubbo students serve 100 free meals a day in Orana Support Service food van program

Students from Dubbo College Delroy Campus, Dubbo College South Campus and Skillset Senior College have been running the van since March as part of a job-ready skills program created by the Orana Support Service.

"It's been absolutely fantastic, the feedback we've received has been very positive from the whole community," Ana Pateman, the program's co-ordinator, told the Daily Liberal.

"We've been serving over 100 people each day that we've had the van up and running."

The food van opened on Monday the 13th of March and operated every weekday from 10:30am to 2:00pm.

Students completed a barista course to learn how to make professional-quality coffee to serve and, each week, the youth running the van created a new menu of free food offerings including sandwiches, bacon and egg rolls, gourmet hot dogs and hot cross buns.

"To get the kids used to the coffee machine we started off with just coffee and hot chocolates. Then we introduced iced chocolates and iced coffees and they have been so popular," Ms Patemen said.

"The students have just excelled. Their barista skills have developed exponentially. They're making fantastic coffee and they're really good under pressure now and have learned how to best use down time to clean and get ready for the next rush."

"They've had a really good work experience opportunity and improved in their communication, customer service, problem solving and working in a team environment."

Originally planned to be based at the Victoria Park Rotunda every morning, Ms Pateman had requests from local community services organisations including Apollo House and the local Aboriginal Land Council to set up shop in their car parks for a day.

"We ended up doing two days at Apollo House and that was fabulous because there were a lot of people in east Dubbo that don't go down town all that often so they were able to just walk around and enjoy our food and drinks," she said.

As well as gaining on-the-job experience in hospitality, students who were involved in the program had the opportunity to learn about the charity and social services sector in Dubbo.

"A lot of not-for-profit providers in town have been bringing busloads of clients down to have our drinks," she said.

"For some of the people who were coming to the van to get some food, that was the only food they'd be getting all day. Especially on Mondays after a weekend of not being able to access our food relief."

"None of the students had any idea that we had homeless people in Dubbo or that there was a women's refuge or any of the programs that we run at Orana Support Service. Now they understand that about Dubbo."

Ms Pateman hopes to run the program again and get the food van out and about in Dubbo more often.

"We've had a lot of feedback that we need more programs in Dubbo for young people to get involved in. So we're hoping that in the near future we'll be able to set the van up and offer some evening meals in winter," she said.

"It would be nice to be able to do another youth program if we can find some funding or we might set something up and just ask for volunteers from the community."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: